Sly Old Reynardine
One evening as I rambled among the leaves so green
I overheard a young woman converse with Reynardine
Her hair was black, her eyes were blue, her lips as red as wine
And he smiled to gaze upon her did that sly old Reynardine
She said, “Kind sir, be civil, my company forsake
For in my own opinion I fear you are some rake”
“Oh no,” he said, “no rake am I, brought up in Venus train
But I'm seeking for concealment all along the lonesome plain
Your beauty so enticed me I could not pass it by
So it's with my gun I'll guard you along the mountains high
And if by chance you should look for me perhaps you'll not me find
For I'll be in my castle, inquire for Reynardine"
Sun went dark, she followed him, his teeth did brightly shine
And he led her over the mountains did that sly old Reynardine
--Traditional
* * * *
'Tell me more...'
Emlyn lay upon a green bower, in a evergreen glade; surrounded by ferns and flowers. Her couch itself was soft as a featherbed and spread with richly woven tapestries and pillows in shades of deep greens, blues, turquoise and burgundy, shot with threads of gold.
Soft music stirred gently upon the air of harp and lute while the warm lustre of small amber lamps encircled them with a rosy glow. Breezes carried the scent of cinnamon and pine.
Gwydion carried two earthenware cups to her side and setting them upon a low table, sat beside her and smiled...absently stroking the scarlet locks straying about her shoulders.
'Tell me more of home. Of Wales, in ages past...'
He handed one of the cups to her, pottery brown with a gold and cobalt glaze; small spirals encircling the bowl. She looked at him, then took the cup.
'Must I 'ware of faery drink?' she asked with a wry smile.
'Only if you believe so.' His warm hand curved about hers upon the cup. 'But, speak you of 'home',' his gaze took in the glade about them. 'Could this not be your home, my Lady?'
'It could be, easily,' she sipped daintily, '...perhaps too easily.'
'Ah. How so?' Gwydion leaned back upon one elbow, taking up his cup in turn.
Emlyn sighed gently. 'I don't believe that it is my calling in life, to take my ease here. Not yet.'
Gwydion nodded. They drank of the golden wine scented with jasmin and tasting of clear mountain springs; a tang of citrus and honey.
'Home, say you. Our true home, the home of the Celts, is long gone, you know. Ages upon ages past.'
Em was surprised to hear that; apparently what Daryl had said about a lost planet, now the asteroid belt, was true then. Gwydion looked deep in her eyes and nodded. 'Just so.' His gaze dropped and he drank of his wine.
Inhaling, he met her eyes once more and smiled.
'So, then. We all gather about the big bonfire, the Coel Coeth, which blazes through the night, and when the last spark is finally out, folk call out: 'The Cutty Black Sow take the hindmost!' and all take to their heels for home...'
'Ah. That's where 'devil take the hindmost' comes from then.' she grinned. 'In the colonies, we lose our roots so easily...one forgets where things originated.'
Gwydion nodded. 'That is what bedevils, if you will, your new country, indeed. Folk have not that rootedness to the land, you see. And so they feel free to defile; to decimate the buffalo, to over-graze their herds, to deforest the hills to erosion, to poison the land and water in their du lust for gold...' His green eyes blazed near-gold then as his gaze bore down upon her.
Em met his gaze, and agreed with her eyes.
'"Du",' she said, '...'dark' is it?'
'Black, indeed.' Gwydion meant business. But Em was up for a challenge.
'...I, was warned against you, yourself, you know...' Here the Sidhe Lord smiled once more, well-pleased at that.
'Indeed?'
'Aye.' She set down her cup. '"Gwydion the Trickster, the Magician", I was told. And, of course, one is cautioned against the Fay in general. And...' she decided to go out on that far-reaching limb, '...it is said there are even stranger beings of Otherworlds.'
Gwydion crossed his knees and folded his hands about them, oddly reminding her of Uncle Daryl. She banished the memory...
'Indeed there are, Lady. Many.' He looked up and about them. 'We are safe from their reach. They do not quest here.' He paused, frowning abit, thinking.
'...However, they do, quest upon your world; and, now that the Way has been Breached from your side, you have aligned yourself more with their frequencies.'
...Sounding more like Daryl all the time, Em thought.
'You did ask,' he told her, again binding her gaze to his. At last he looked elsewhere, and sighed.
'Tis a free-will universe and like will attract like. Is it any real shock to find rievers and raiders seeking prey upon a planet of same?'
So, Daryl was right...Em was not pleased to realize.
She frowned. 'I'm still...much confounded by this...
So, what are we to do, then?'
'Be yourself.' His eyes studied hers, golden lights dancing within. No one had ever gripped her with a gaze as did Gwydion. 'I know your soul and spirit, cariad, and it would not allow you to do other than good.'
Em looked down, blushing. But he touched her chin with his finger, bringing her head to rights. 'My wee cig oen...' he smiled.
'What is that?' asked Em tentatively.
'"Lamb", he stroked her cheek, '...so soft...'
'Does that make you a wolf, then?' she dared sass the Sidhe.
It fazed not Gwydion, who then took her in his arms and eased himself down upon her bower. 'Nay...tis a Llew, am I, a Lion...made thus, to lie down with the Lamb...'
. . . .
Emlyn and Gwydion walked through the morning mists of the grounds of Caer Gwydion; the sun high as they slept late (whatever was late or early here, though, seemed arbitrary and capricious, Em noted...sometimes they were abed as the stars rose with the moon just after sunset, and then asleep again by noon, only to rise with the dusk and walk, sing, dance throughout the long evenings; which may end with a seeming sunrise and then, finding yet another starry night hard on its heels...
Emlyn was not the least discomfited by these chancy capers of sun and moon...here the day was not so bright, the colors not so glaring to the eyes; while the evenings were, contrary-wise, not as dim; indeed, pale colors glowed softly as if lighted from within, and one could stroll through a wood easily as if t'were daylight, a seeming Twilight ever accompanied the moon's regnancy.
Gwydion paused as the wood opened onto a meadow, and whistled thrice, sounding more like a bird's call than a man's. A thunder of hooves announced the approach of a white stallion, gold mane flying...just as in tales of old, thought Em, quite giddy with delight.
'Shaa, shuh-shuh...' Gwydion whispered to the faery steed, stroking his grand head, and producing a green apple from his pocket, handed it to Em, who offered it to the lordly beast, which was received with dainty gusto.
'He's magnificent!' Emlyn stroked his elegant features, as the fey creature breathed in her scent and then she turned up her chin and nose-to-nose with him, they exchanged breaths. Just as would a mundane equine would do, then he snorted and shook his head, and began to graze at their feet.
'I have seldom, if ever, seen such a horse, of such a rare color, or type...' Larger than an Arabian, but with the sculpted, dish-face of that breed, yet somewhat like unto the Andalusian; they of the long, lusterous mane and tail. Small hooves on slender, but muscular legs, with feathered fetlocks which seemed almost like...feathers.
'Nor will you see any like, anywhere but Here. He is a faery horse.' His eyes danced merrily. 'I call him Gwyn, of course.'
Of course, thought Em, patting the sleek neck. 'Gwyn, meaning 'white, shining'...' Em knew that much, and more: she also bethought of Gwyn ap Nudd --"fair/white son of Nudd"--the abductor of the maiden Creiddylad after her elopement with Gwythr ap Greidawl, a long-time rival of his. He helped Culhwch hunt the boar Twrch Trwyth, and in later legends he was king of the "fair folk", the Tylwyth Teg.
Gwydion laughed. 'Ah, that Gwyn, indeed. The father of us all, well...of many, let us say! He was ever the one for abducting maidens fair. But, here...'
He cupped his hands and made a stirrup, helping Em up on the stallion's back. 'I can see you two are friends already...' Grabbing a handful of mane, he hoisted himself up behind her and took firm hold of her waist.
Bending about her over the stallion's great neck, he then whispered, 'Let us fly!' And fly they did, Mercury-like, Gwyn needing little encouragment to take to his feathered heels...
. . . .
Later, as they walked with the great horse sedately by the flowing river, (Which was named 'Dee', also; like unto it's worldly sister in Wales, Em learned), Gwydion pulled up their mount allowing him to graze; he slid from the faery steed's back then, and reached up to help Emlyn down beside him.
They strolled along, Gwyn following, (not something many unbridled mundane steeds would do, thought Em), and Emlyn breathed in the warm fall air scented with brown leaves and grasses, noting with pleasure that although the breezes blew here, and the leaves fell, the trees themselves were never denuded. It had always made Em rather sad to see the last of autumn...
Gwydion spun her round into his arms as he leant back upon a mossy rock. He kissed her neck, saying, 'Here you may never want for lack of leaves, in all their fine fall rainments...'
Emlyn smiled, and fingered the moonstone about her neck. She wondered, for the first time, how long she had been here. She'd given little thought to those she'd left behind, or indeed, of anything but Here and Now. Surely, she'd been here only a day or twa...
Gwydion was silent. He gazed beyond her, sighing, and pulled her to him. He rested his chin upon her crimson head. 'A ceiniog for your thoughts, Lady...'
Em sighed in turn. 'I...I just realized I haven't thought of anything or anyone back home, since I've been here...'
Gwydion frowned, looking at her then. 'I thought this was 'home' to you now.'
Emlyn bit her lip, thinking. It wasn't easy to focus here... 'It is. I hope, in fact, someday, that it may be my home, for good and all.'
'But, not yet?'
Em looked down at the leafy carpet beneath their feet, swishing the colors together with her toe, like a painter mixing her palette.
'I have some friends, back...back in California, who have journey'd through Time.'
Gwydion smiled. 'Indeed? The Van Horns, you're speaking of?'
'You know them!?' Em looked at him, aghast.
'Not personally, no...' Gwydion took her hand and they sat upon the large mossy stones scattered about.
'It was Daryl Van Horn, was it not, who was so ferociously intent upon us, the night we left?'
Em sighed shortly. 'Yes, it was he. Anyway,' she endeavored to return to the topic at hand, 'they came bearing ill tidings of the future. They returned, I believe, to try to alter that course somehow.'
'Ah. I see. Men of vision.' Gwydion pulled a grass-stem and chewed upon it, musing. 'Tis a tricky contrivance, that. Time.'
'Contrivance?'
'Aye, just so. To fool the folk into linear thinking.
Once, all knew time to be circular, you see, not an unnaturally straight line from beginning to end. In the cycle of the seasons, the Mother makes this plain to all, with eyes to see.'
'That's just it, my Lord, people don't see! Especially in their time. And, I must admit, that in the city, I lose touch with the natural rhythm of nature...' Emlyn looked troubled. 'I would wish that there was something I could do...'
Gwydion looked intently upon her. His hand went to her hair...she had left it long, making small braids randomly about. Elf-locks, he bethought.
'You are so much like Seren, your mother.'
Emlyn studied him now, intent. 'You knew my mother?'
'Of course. We are kin. As are you and I, my darling dear. Cariad...' he put a hand upon her shoulder. 'Not close kin! But, all Kelts are kin to the Sidhe, who came there, to your world, from the stars, as was told in your legends of the Tuatha de Danann. And, as you have the Welsh blood of your mother, so too, have you ours.' He kissed her hand softly.
'And, as the Sons and Daughters of Don are the progenitors and guardians of the Welsh, so am I, your guardian, blood-brother, and lover. Husband, if you would have me. Stay, Lady...and be my Queen...'
Emlyn felt rocked to her core. She was moved beyond measure. This was all she could ever wish! But, it would mean leaving the battleground below, and it made her heart-sore. She choked back a sob, thinking that tears had no place in this world beyond travail.
'Ah. There, now...druan a chi!' Gwydion held her close, rocking her slowly, and began a slow waltz with her, as he hummed a quiet tune, familiar and yet not...
'What does that mean?' Em sniffed.
He kissed the top of her head. 'It means sommat like, 'you poor wee thing!' Isn't that how we comfort one another? Tis not so different here...'
They stayed thus awhile, as Em got over her fit of sentimentality, as she bethought it, strangely melancholy suddenly. She felt a cold breath of air upon the back of her neck then, and Gwyn raised his head, snuffing the wind. She felt a Presentiment. And she thought then of Jack.
Gwydion was no fool, he. 'Hmm. Well, think on things some while then. I'm not going anywhere, you know!' He smiled, then became serious. 'It is an odd place, this new country you have adopted, Lady...some say, that it has called to it the souls of those lost beneath the Great Wave.'
'What is this?' Em looked up at him, as they ceased their dance. 'Do you mean the tale of Noah's Ark?'
'Nay, Lady. Long, long ago; ages before the god of the Hebrews came with his fire and brimstone...' He called Gwen to him and they mounted, heading back to Caer Gwydion. The Lord of the Sidhe sighed deeply. 'For 'tis Olde Atlantis, of which I speak...'
. . . .
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